-----Original Message----- From: zope-admin@zope.org [mailto:zope-admin@zope.org]On Behalf Of Christopher Petrilli Sent: 16. juni 1999 23:49 To: David J. Orme; zope@zope.org Subject: Re: [Zope] Cool but...

...

Okay, Zope looks *really*, *really* cool. The one thing I *really* wish I could do is to NFS mount or SMB mount the object database onto my file system. Then I wouldn't have to go through the nonsense of uploading graphic files and Zope would automatically interoperate with all of my HTML editing tools.

Our approach is to use FTP to get into the Object Database, and this is supported today, so long as you're using ZServer for your server. Having said this, while I think that SMB and NFS are interesting ideas, both have their own SERIOUS problems that are difficult to overcome. If you wish to undertake this, you should look at what hoops have to be jumped through to get FTP working... sorta.

Moreover you can accomplish the same thing by using an FTP-enabled editor (UltraEdit, FTPEdit, Emacs) or even mirroring (you can replicate between a local file area and ZServer's FTP server).

If you're using Windows machines, you should investigate IE5+WebDAV (which is called Web Folders)... this might be of some help.

Unfortunately, IE5's WebDAV support has no provisions for in-place editing, and so again, you need a specialized editor for that.

Please understand that while the object database might LOOK like a file system in some regards, it contains data which can not be expressed in any common file system,

Except for BeOS' BFS file system, of course. :-) It does attributes, transactions, and efficient RDBMS-like queries. And don't count out NTFS 5, either (due for NT 5.0, er, Windows 2000 (yuck)), which supports out-of-band attribute data and more. And now Linux will be getting XFS from SGI's IRIX -- the premier journaling file system of the UNIX world -- which surely supports at least some of these features?

as well as organizational ideas which are completely foreign to the file-based world (such as acquisition).... just a bit of clarity.

True, although this is not something that precludes the use of a file-system metaphor. Even Zope's own management screens visualize the database as a hierchical system of container objects.

...

Even so, I think I'm going to give Zope a whirl on a small project and see what happens. I like PHP but wish it had exceptions to help create more robust code. I think that Python is a better programming language, and the way Zope integrates it into the web environment is very intriguing.

Let us know how it goes at the end.

Chris -- | Christopher Petrilli Digital Creations, Inc. | petrilli@digicool.com http://www.digicool.com

_______________________________________________ Zope maillist - Zope@zope.org http://www.zope.org/mailman/listinfo/zope (For developer-specific issues, use the companion list, zope-dev@zope.org - http://www.zope.org/mailman/listinfo/zope-dev )